


stop trying to make fetch happen

by futuredescending



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: 5+1 Things, Kosmo is a good doggo, M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-07-03 08:13:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15814974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/futuredescending/pseuds/futuredescending
Summary: 5 times Kosmo fetched Shiro (+1 time Shiro was okay with it)





	stop trying to make fetch happen

**Author's Note:**

> Look, it's a rite of fandom passage to write a 5+1, so here's mine.

**One.**

After a long and tedious day of low-level frustrating meetings with various Garrison officers and administrators, the only thing Shiro was looking forward to as he walked back to his quarters was a nap. Correction: a hot shower, then nap. Maybe a forage for food later if he was up for it.

Phase one of the plan was off to an encouraging start as he stepped under the blissfully pressurized spray of hot water and let it soothe his aching muscles and joints from remaining in one position for so long. Who knew sitting could be so tiring? What was left of his right shoulder, and especially where his prosthetic arm was joined, ached something especially fierce. Idly, he gave thanks to whoever crafted the arm to be waterproof, because trying to clean one’s self up with one hand, and a non-dominant hand at that, was no easy feat.

With great reluctance, Shiro turned off the water and stepped out of shower, reaching for the towel he’d hung up close by. It was while he was giving himself a quick, cursory pat down that he spied out of the corner of his eye the sudden appearance of a very large black and blue wolf next to him in the very small bathroom.

“Kosmo! Hey buddy, didn’t see you there….” he startled despite himself, and before he could do anything else, Kosmo rushed at him, brushing his still damp legs. Faster than Shiro could even blink, there was a sharp displacement of _something_ , a flash of darkness for less than an instant, and then all he could feel was much cooler, drier air because they were no longer in Shiro’s bathroom anymore.

Instead, Shiro found himself standing in the center of the Garrison’s gymnasium, half-dripping wet, and possessing only a small towel, which he hastily gathered in front of his groin when he spotted Keith leaning against the wall a mere three feet away.

Their eyes met at the same time.

Keith jolted like he’d been electrocuted, eyes wide with mortification. “Oh no! Oh, fuck!”

A quick glance around the gym proved they were fortunately alone. Minor blessings. Trying very much to not completely lose his shit, Shiro straightened and attempted to wrap his towel around his hips without accidentally giving anyone a show. “Keith,” he congratulated himself on his calm and even tone, “why did Kosmo teleport me to the gym?”

“It was a joke?” Keith said weakly, his entire body cringing in on itself. “I was teaching him to play fetch and, uh, he’s a quick learner, so I just threw that one out there, but I swear to god, Shiro, I didn’t think he’d actually do it! I am _so sorry_.”

Shiro stared at him. “You asked your cosmic wolf to go fetch me?”

“...maybe?”

Keith was no longer meeting his gaze, instead fascinated by something on Shiro’s torso while his cheeks grew redder. Couldn’t be the scars, Keith had seen them plenty of times already. Shiro followed the path of his eye line and looked down. Other than a single droplet of water sliding down his chest and the ridges of his stomach to finally be soaked up by the edges of the towel, Shiro couldn’t find anything different about himself. Really, Shiro should be grateful Kosmo hadn’t come in while he was still actually in the shower.

He sighed and repressed a shiver. His skin was breaking out into goosebumps. It was _chilly_. “I don’t suppose Kosmo could, oh, I don’t know, teleport me back so I don’t have to walk to the other end of the Garrison wearing only a towel?” A towel that was barely wide enough to let him maintain his modesty, and that was only if he kept his stride very, very short.

“Right.” Shaking himself out of whatever trance he’d been in, Keith looked sternly at Kosmo. “Er...can you...put him back now?”

Kosmo just quirked his head.

“Uh," Keith’s flush, amazingly, deepened into a shade Shiro had never seen on him outside of anger, “I don’t think he’s learned how to do that one yet.”

Which was just great.

 

_____

 

**Two.**

After suffering a week of _Hey Commando Shirogane!_ ribbing and catcalls since the unfortunate Towel Incident (apparently, superior rank didn’t command much respect when it belonged to a man walking quickly down the halls in a tiny towel), Shiro didn’t suffer any further ill-timed teleportation incidents and gradually the jokes and whispers died down as other juicy incidents overtook the gossip cycle.

Which was just as well, because today Shiro was due to give a welcome speech to the Garrison’s newest recruits and he needed to at least come across as inspiring in a ‘You made a great decision in joining us to defend Earth against a super technologically advanced war-loving race of feline aliens!’ sort of way. At least their numbers had unexpectedly swelled with applicants after the destruction of Sendak’s fleet.

They were all assembled in the Garrison’s largest hangar, surrounded by their fleet of new ships. A raised stage had been set up right in front of Atlas for maximum optics. A few members of the press had even been permitted to live broadcast the entire event to everyone all over the world. As the Galaxy Garrison Marching Band ended their particularly rousing rendition of Earth’s Anthem, Shiro ascended the stage and approached the podium to a roar of applause that sounded ten times louder in the vast cavern of the hangar.

It never failed to fill him with both a sense of awe and humility to gaze out into the crowd of new cadets and see their hopeful and terribly young faces looking back. But they were the next generation, and they were going to do even greater things. Shiro always had hope.

He smiled at them, and they smiled back.

He opened his mouth to begin the first words of his speech, which were a quote by a very famous general from World War Three, but he didn’t get to utter so much as a _My fellow Garrison compatriots_ before the very familiar dark shape of Kosmo materialized right next to him on the stage, much to the confusion of the crowd.

“What….” Shiro said, staring down at Kosmo in alarm, but he didn’t even get to finish his question before the world blinked in and out of existence and he was no longer standing on stage before his very confused audience.

He was now in Keith’s quarters. Specifically, in Keith’s bedroom. With Keith, who was—

“Are you alright?” Shiro couldn’t help but ask.

Keith looked positively feverish. His eyes were glazed. His cheeks were red. Hair stuck to his damp forehead in darkened clumps. He was curled up in bed, bunching the covers in his lap, staring back at Shiro in shock and horror. “What are you doing here?” Keith says somewhere in between a strangled shout and squeak.

“Kosmo brought me here again. Are you sick? You look like you have a temperature.” Shiro could feel his Inner Mother Hen rouse from its prolonged hibernation. He stepped closer and stretched out a hand to touch Keith’s face only to drop it when Keith flinched.

“I didn’t call for you like that, I swear! I was just...oh my god.” The glare Keith leveled at his wolf could have seared through a Galra battle cruiser. “ _You_. Shiro, I’m so sorry. This isn’t...uh…what was supposed to happen.”

To say that Shiro was confused would be an understatement. He was utterly bewildered, and possibly a little disoriented from having been forcibly physically transported across a sizable distance in a negligible amount of time, because it took way too long for everything to click.

Keith was in bed, sweaty and flushed, though now that latter was probably due to embarrassment. There were tissues and a small bottle on the bedside table. He also wasn’t wearing a shirt nor, Shiro was starting to suspect, a single stitch of clothing beneath the Garrison’s scratchy bedding. _He’s really filled out_ , Shiro couldn’t help but numbly think, immediately squashing that thought right in its tracks because it’s dangerous territory.

And then there was the smell still lingering in the air, which was...oh.

 _Oh_.

“Can we just forget this ever happened?” Keith begged him.

“Yes, yes we can,” Shiro immediately said, looking everywhere else but at him. The plain white walls didn’t really offer a convincing alternative, but Shiro was determined to mine their hidden depths.

“I didn’t...interrupt anything too important, did I?” Keith tentatively asks.

Shiro risked a brief side glance his way. Keith was nodding at his full dress uniform. “Oh, just the welcome speech to the new cadets, the press, Garrison senior officials, and an audience of thousands around the world.”

There was a long pause as that realization sank in.

“Ah,” Keith said quietly as he sank lower into his bed like the mattress would simply swallow him whole. “I guess you better...go back to that.” Then, as if even his own personal humiliation couldn’t keep him down for long, he added, and not with a little of his usual smart ass self, “But hey, at least you’re the one wearing clothes this time, right?”

Shiro narrowed his eyes and scowled.

 

_____

 

**Three.**

Being catapulted to leading Earth’s newly upgraded forces of Earth-Altean ships and weaponry was a very time-consuming task. It was no longer just about planning the next military strategy or making sure his ship was in working order. It was making sure New York City had enough food and supplies to last through their winter. It was re-routing the supply chain between Paris and Astana when floods had damaged some of the hover rail lines. It was ensuring the latest outbreak of tuberculosis in northwest India was quickly treated with an emergency shipment of medication and medical personnel. It was a 24-hour job, because something was always happening in some part of the world and people now looked to Shiro to handle it.

Shiro tiredly rubbed at his eyes as he listened to the latest Voltron Coalition diplomat drone on and on about how wonderful it would be to establish a trading partnership between their two planets, despite the fact the only valuable thing Ambassador Srikna’s planet had to offer was some sort of terrifyingly sentient carnivorous plant.

“They produce twice the amount of oxygen as your flora!”

“I just think the drawbacks slightly outweigh the benefits in this case,” Shiro said while trying to stifle his yawn.

“Don’t your Earthlings complain about others ruining your vegetation by walking all over it? This would solve that problem!”

“I’m not sure getting one’s legs bitten off is an appropriate deterrent for trespassing.”

You would think nearly a year of being dead would have left him well rested, but apparently not. Shiro managed to catch little cat naps here and there when he could, but it was starting to catch up with him. Veronica once found him asleep at his desk, which wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t been using his untouched and now dead cold dinner as a makeshift and very messy, tomato-flavored pillow.

He was in the middle of trying to find the best way to gently end their negotiations when Kosmo popped into existence right on the conference table they were sitting at.

“Oh no,” was all Shiro could get out before his right shoulder was gently taken up between Kosmo’s teeth and he was whisked away (and thankfully, so was his prosthetic forearm).

Only, instead of expecting to see Keith looking embarrassed about whatever accident caused this latest mishap, he finds himself squinting from the blistering midday sun because he’s on the Garrison roof with….

“Lance?”

The aforementioned man in question had somehow found a beach chair from who-knew-where and was reclining across it like an 18th century noble woman. Later, Shiro would have to reflect on how many privileges the Voltron Paladins got at the Garrison and possibly revise them.

“So it is true!” Lance said, appraising him over his sunglasses. “Cool.”

“What?”

“The whole Kosmo-fetches-you-on-command thing. I thought Keith was just humble-bragging again, but for once, Mullet lives up to his words,” Lance said as he tossed a piece of raw meat in Kosmo’s direction. “Good boy, Kosmo! Who’s my good boy?”

Kosmo pounced on the meat and gobbled it up in two snaps of his jaws.

Shiro closed his eyes and counted to ten before speaking. He liked Lance. Lance was a Paladin of Voltron. He was still needed and Shiro probably shouldn’t try to kill him. “You mean to tell me, you had Kosmo come ‘fetch’ me while I was in the middle of a diplomatic meeting with another planet’s ambassador just to see if you could?”

It took several moments for Lance to reply. “Er. Well. When you put it like that, it sounds kind of bad, doesn’t it? Sorry?” He winced. “On a scale of one to ten, how mad are you?”

Shiro took a deep breath, held it, and then released it, letting his shoulders sink in resignation. “To be honest, I would have gnawed off my other arm if it meant I could escape that meeting any earlier.”

Lance perked up. “So I totally just did you a solid?” Then he grew alarmed. "Wait. Is that what happened to your arm, someone gnawed on it like a chicken bone?"

“No, you didn’t and no, they didn't. Please stop reinforcing Kosmo’s training on this,” Shiro said, striving for calm. “It’s still inconvenient at best and humiliating at worst.”

Lance made a show of thinking about this before shrugging carelessly. “Yeah, okay. I mean, it’s not like fetching you is all that great anyway. Trust me, if I wanted to summon instant disappointment in my life choices, I’d phone my mom. Now, if Kosmo here can be trained to fetch me a pizza, then we’re talking.”

Shiro looked over at the edge of the Garrison roof and contemplated jumping off it. It wasn’t high enough to kill him, but maybe it would knock him out for a few days if he was lucky.

In the end, he didn’t, but only because he was pretty sure that in his absence, Ambassador Srikna would convince someone in the Garrison to agree to the deal he was trying to push, and then Earth would turn into the Little Shop of Horrors and that simply wasn’t how he wanted his legacy to end up.

 

_____

 

**Four.**

It was going to be another late night, and sadly, Shiro couldn’t even call that unusual anymore. There simply wasn’t enough time in the day for everything to get done, so often the work encroached upon his nights as well, whether it was reading over reports, reviewing proposals, or preparing for the day’s next round of meetings. His body had long ago learned how to survive on little sleep, but he had to admit, the frequency of these all-nighters was starting to wear him down into little more than a tightly drawn wire of tension. He found himself snappish at others more often than not. His patience was wearing thinner and thinner. Everything and every _one_ was just so exhausting.

It was why Shiro didn’t really register Kosmo at first. The wolf practically blended in with the shadows of his quarters since he had all the lights off save for the reading lamp on his desk. The words of the report he was reading were blurring together on the page, and he blearily rubbed at his eyes to sharpen them, but to no avail. It was painfully dull, and soon Shiro felt his eyes and focus slipping.

At least until the shadows _moved_ , which served to send a spike of adrenaline through his veins. Shiro shot up from his chair, his arm lighting up in preparation for an attack, only to find his attacker abruptly appearing right in front of him: large, black, and furry.

Shit.

He started backing away. “Kosmo, no! Bad dog! Er...wolf! Don’t you dare—!” Shiro tried to order sternly, but it was already too late as Kosmo’s hind legs tensed and he pounced.

It was disorienting to suddenly be plunged into darkness. Shiro felt his sharp inhale freeze in his chest, his body tensing, and his senses straining outwards to compensate for his loss of eyesight.

But gradually, his eyes grew accustomed to the dark and familiar shapes began to materialize. Still at the Garrison. In one of the guest quarters maybe. The relatively larger space and some of the furniture items meant it wasn’t one of the cadets’ smaller, efficient rooms, so it had to be one of the more luxurious appointments usually reserved for more prominent guests, which meant...oh.

He could make out Keith’s profile through a sliver of moonlight that cut in through the window. This was Keith’s room, and there’s no way Keith could have commanded Kosmo to teleport him here on purpose or by accident, so how…?

Keith shifted in his sleep, his brows furrowing into a pinched expression Shiro often witnessed when he was troubled. As the seconds passed, it became more and more agitated, until Shiro’s heart lodged itself in his throat, because he knew from experience what it was like to be in the midst of a growing nightmare.

“No...don’t!” Keith muttered, shaking his head back and forth, his body shifting beneath the covers like he was struggling against something. “No!”

Shiro froze, not knowing what to do. He was in Keith’s room, even though it wasn’t of his own volition, it was too personal, and Keith wouldn’t want Shiro to witness something like this. But then again, it would be cruel to leave Keith trapped in the claws of something clearly terrible.

“No! No, no, no! Shiro!” Keith cried out. “ _Shiro!_ ”

Shiro stumbled forward, unable to withstand hearing his name falling from Keith’s lips with so much pain. He grabbed Keith by the shoulders, trying to shake him awake. “Keith! Keith, wake up! You’re okay! It’s just a dream, you’re okay!”

It took a few more gentle shakes and his hands graduating to stroking Keith’s hair and face, before Keith’s eyes slowly opened and even longer for awareness to come back to them. “Shiro?”

Shiro let out a sigh of relief, sagging against Keith like it had been him caught in the throes of a nightmare. He wished it had been. It was infinitely worse to be helpless when it happened to someone else. “Are you okay?”

It took longer than Shiro would have liked for Keith to respond. “...yeah. Yeah, sorry, did I wake you up? No wait...how did you even…?” 

Wordlessly, Shiro looked over at Kosmo, who looked unapologetic as he sank down to the floor and rested his head on his paws.

Keith groaned. “Again? I swear to god, Shiro, if I had known this would keep happening….”

“It’s fine,” Shiro assured him. “Well, it was eventually. You were calling out my name in your dream. Maybe that’s what alerted him to go and fetch me.”

“I was?” Keith cringed, shrinking in on himself. “It was...I was dreaming...we were fighting. But it wasn’t really you. It was your….”

Evil clone, he didn’t need to say. Shiro winced in spite of himself. He didn’t often let himself think about the fact that the body he was inhabiting wasn’t his original one, nor did he like to think about all the horrible things his clone had done, how close it had come to killing everyone, killing _Keith_. Clearly, though, the consequences were still being felt long after the fact.

And Shiro would never be able to apologize enough, even if Keith never wanted to hear it. Still had to try though. “Keith, I’m so—”

And just like always, Keith shut him up, this time by actually putting a finger to his mouth. “For the hundredth time. It wasn’t you. You have nothing to be sorry for, so stop.” When he was satisfied Shiro wasn’t going to try again, he dropped his hand, not into his lap as expected, but on Shiro’s chest, fingering the edges of his by now wrinkled Garrison uniform. “I pulled you away from something important. Again.”

“No you didn’t,” Shiro said. “Just burning the midnight oil by catching up on some reports. I’m glad for the break.” Now that the sharp edges of his nightmare were receding and the adrenaline along with it, Keith’s eyes drooped and he barely managed to stifle a yawn. “You should go back to sleep.”

But Keith just stubbornly shook his head. “I’m not tired anymore.” Which was a blatant lie, but Shiro could see some of the fear that still lurked in his eyes. He didn’t want to have any more bad dreams.

Keith was too proud to accept help when it was directly offered, but Shiro had long since learned how to work around it. “I could...stay. For awhile. While you at least rest. I could do for a rest too.”

Keith blinked and looked at Shiro almost shyly. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. If it’s alright with you.”

“Okay,” Keith said a little too quickly to sound all that diffident about it, but neither of them cared as he scooted back in the bed to make more room and Shiro leaned down to remove his boots.

Unlike the cadet barracks, the guest quarters had beds big enough to fit the two of them comfortably, though Keith and Shiro huddled close together as if they were lying on a small cot. Keith fit under his arm like the space had been carved out just for him, resting his head against Shiro’s chest. It was nice. He missed times like this when it was just the two of them.

Really nice, Shiro thought as Keith’s breathing evened out into deep almost-snores. There was a lot more of Keith to hold than the last time they had done this. Keith was almost as tall as him. Broader. He was practically half covering Shiro like a blanket. Shiro couldn’t help running a hand down his back, feeling the chiseled structure of muscles and sturdy bone. Nor could he help leaning in to inhale a little of Keith’s scent. He smelled like wind and sand and hot metal and that not-quite human scent that had always been there and that Shiro loved.

_Love._

Oh god.

As if just realizing what the hell he was doing, Shiro pulled back to stare at the blank ceiling in horror. 

 

_____

 

**Five.**

Tim was a nice guy, Shiro reminded himself as they left the restaurant they had just eaten dinner at and walked to the movie theater in the still-recovering city. The theater had been one of the first businesses to reopen and people flocked to it in search of lighthearted distraction after so much trauma.

It was also the site of Shiro’s first date in... _years_.

It recently occurred to Shiro that maybe his newly-discovered and incredibly inappropriate feelings towards Keith might be the result of years of not really doing anything in that particular area of his life, and that maybe not being in a state of constant war now meant he should work on developing said neglected parts of his life so aforementioned inappropriate feelings could find a more appropriate outlet.

Or, as Veronica so crudely put it, “You need to get laid, Commander.”

She really was Lance’s sister.

“Someone needs to flatten you like a pancake. Climb you like a tree. Stuff you like a turkey. Play with your joystick—”

“And we’re done here,” Shiro had cut her off before she could make the haunting visuals any worse.

Way too much like Lance.

But, she had come through for him in the end. After mentioning that he was maybe sort of looking to get back into the dating game, nothing serious, just something fun, Veronica, who somehow had her finger on the pulse of every eligible gay or bisexual man within a hundred mile radius, had promptly set him up on a blind date with Tim Rutherford, a doctor at the Garrison, and outside of Shiro’s chain of command, just in case Shiro had any reservations about that (which, of course he did).

And Tim was...a nice guy. Handsome. Blonde and blue eyed. A runner’s build. A few inches shorter than Shiro himself, which wasn’t all that unusual. Square jaw. He didn’t seem to mind Shiro’s prosthetic arm or his visible scars or his white hair.

He was also so, so boring.

They really didn’t have much in common aside from their mutual employer. Shiro enjoyed science, space, and going really fast in anything he could get his hands on. Tim enjoyed reading philosophy, fishing, and history. Tim had a fear of heights and didn’t like flying. Tim could go on and on about some old guy named Hume while Shiro almost fell asleep over dinner. He didn’t understand why Shiro still wanted to go out into space after everything he experienced. Tim liked keeping his two feet firmly planted on Earth. He had little desire to see what lay beyond it.

The conversation didn’t really get better from there.

Tim meant well. They just weren’t all that compatible.

 _It’s not like you’re buying a house together_ , he could already hear Veronica say, _he just needs to have a big di—_

He really needed to spend less time with her.

The movie came after. Shiro would have been relieved to have put a stop to any more excruciating attempts at conversation, except Hollywood understandably wasn’t making a lot of movies lately and the theater was showing precisely one film.

A “based on a true story” biopic of Voltron and its Paladins of Earth.

“We don’t...uh, we don’t have to watch it,” Tim had said upon seeing the marquee and movie posters plastering the windows of the theater. “It would be understandable.”

Shiro could see that he was interested in the film, though, and really, he didn’t want to ruin their night further by refusing, especially after their lackluster dinner. “No, it’s fine. I’m curious to see what they did. Besides, these kinds of things are always ridiculously exaggerated anyway.”

And of course, the film was exactly that, from the actors who played them (nice to know they cast a Chinese American actor to play Shiro, because of course they would) to the liberal amount of artistic license they took with the storyline (no, Keith couldn’t turn into some weird Galra cat creature like a werewolf, and oh god, he hoped Keith never found out about this movie).

But other parts of the film felt a little too on the nose, especially the flashbacks to Shiro’s time in the arena. The time when he was dead and his clone had replaced him. Those were...those were a bit intense.

Shiro thought he’d been doing a good job at hiding it, but apparently not, because Tim took one glance at him clutching at the edges of his seat and forcibly dragged Shiro up and out of the theater despite the fact there was still half an hour of the movie to go.

Nevertheless, the air was cool on his flushed and sweaty face and the tight knot in Shiro’s chest loosened considerably beneath the open night sky. When he was finally able to get a hold of his senses again, he found himself in Tim’s arms, his body warming Shiro up while he rubbed Shiro’s back and spoke to him in low, soothing whispers to breathe in and out to his count.

“Thank you,” Shiro managed to say shakily when he finally found his voice. He still didn’t feel quite solid yet, like one little shove and he’d fall apart like shattered glass. “Haven’t had one of those in awhile.”

“It’s okay,” Tim said, a gentle smile on his face that lit up his eyes in a rather lovely way. “I’m sorry you had to go through that, especially over such a mediocre film.”

The dryly issued comment surprised a much-needed laugh out of Shiro. Tim was... _nice_. Really nice. Smelled nice too. And yeah, Shiro could get used to this.

The pleasant feeling stayed with Shiro as they drove back to the Garrison. And as they both got out of the car to part ways for their respective quarters at different ends of the base, Shiro found himself lingering, not quite wanting to go just yet. Tim didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry either if that look in his eye was anything to go by.  


Just a little fun, Shiro thought. It didn’t have to be serious or go anywhere beyond tonight. He really needed this.

Tim started to raise a hand to cup Shiro’s face. Shiro leaned in just a little and started to close his eyes in anticipation. He could feel the heat from Tim’s body, waited to feel the press of his lips and—

—was more than a little frustrated to find the warm body he was leaning towards suddenly _gone_ and replaced by nothing but cold empty air.

He stumbled forward, a bit stunned, only to realize he was no longer on the ground but on the Garrison’s _roof_. With Keith. Who was glaring at him. And, of course, Kosmo, who also seemed to be glaring at him with accusation too.

“What are you doing?” Keith demanded.

“What?” Shiro blinked, taken aback by his unexpected displacement, a major cock block via cosmic wolf, and...and how upset Keith sounded. “What do you mean, what am I doing?”

“Were you...were you on a date?”

“I…” Shiro felt his cheeks going red. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business. Why did you...I was still on that date, for the record! What are _you_ doing?”

“Saving you!” Keith said like it was obvious. What?

“Saving me? From what?” Shiro asked, bewildered.

“From that...that guy! He looked like he was about to get handsy!”

“What is this, you trying to protect my virtue?” Shiro scoffed. “Maybe I wanted him to get handsy!”

And why did Keith look like Shiro just punched him in the face? “You can’t do that!”

Shiro just stared at him like he’d grown two heads. “Why not?”

Keith’s mouth opened and closed a few times, his hands flapping in front of him. “Because you’re…you’re Shiro! That’s not what you do! You...you lead the team...and Atlas! And the Garrison! You’re Earth’s defender! You don’t have time or even want to...to….”

Alright, now that was just unfair. He knew Keith had always put him on some impossibly tall pedestal, but he wasn’t some kind of saint, for christ’s sake, and he certainly didn’t want to be a celibate one. “I’m human, Keith!” Shiro shouted at him, throwing his arms wide because he thought he more than earned the right to be a little dramatic tonight. “More specifically, I’m a healthy twenty-seven year old male who hasn’t had company with anyone but his own hand in over three years! And do you know how seriously difficult that is when it’s not even your dominant hand? Of course I want it tonight! And I was so close! _So close_ , until you stopped it! Why? Why would you do that, Keith?” And so what if he sounded like a whiny, horny teenager right about now? He practically _was_.

“Because you shouldn’t want it with anyone except me!”

The silence continued while his words rang in Shiro’s ears. Or possibly across the entire Garrison because it was pretty quiet and Keith had shouted them. There were definitely at least a few guards on duty who heard him too.

As the seconds passed by, Keith’s face went through a series of reactions, from open pleading to, as the non-responsiveness continued, to abject embarrassment, and then finally resignation.

“I’m sorry,” he said to Shiro as he finally settled his features into something frighteningly empty and blank. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. Um. Can we just forget I ever said that? Go back to being what we were before?” Then, before Shiro could say anything, he nodded like he was coming to some sort of decision. “I’ll just go. I’m sorry for ruining your date or booty call or whatever. He’s probably still down there. You’re kinda worth waiting around for.”

He started to leave, but Shiro caught him at the shoulder with his prosthetic hand, holding him in place as easily as a cat pinning down a mouse. “Why didn’t you say anything earlier?”

Keith snorted. “When would I have done that? Between repelling Sendak’s invasion and fighting Haggar’s robeasts? Keeping Lotor from imploding the universe or battling your scary evil clone? Or maybe all those months when you were super out of it and acted like you were just haunting your own body? Or should I have told evil clone you instead? Yeah, forgive me for not wanting to just casually slip that one in there.”

“You said I was your brother! That establishes a pretty distinctive line I wasn’t going to cross!”

Keith paused. “...in my defense, I never had a brother. I didn’t really know what I was talking about.”

Making a noise that sounded like something between a frustrated growl and a whine (Kosmo’s ears perked up in interest), Shiro pulled Keith closer until he was plastered against him like a human (or, well, half-Galra, at any rate, whatever their average body temperature was) blanket and couldn’t help reaching up to wrap his human hand around the back of Keith’s neck. “I love you.” A beat. “Not like a brother.”

Keith winced, but he was all too happy to spread his fingers against Shiro’s chest. “You’re never going to let me live that one down, are you?”

“Nope. Consider it payback for all the times you had Kosmo treat me like a frisbee,” Shiro said happily before leaning in to kiss him

 

_____

 

**+1**

“Shields are down. Comms are offline. Weapons are offline. Our engines are struggling to reboot, but at this trajectory, we’re on a collision course for Haggar’s ship, Captain!” 

Outside the Atlas, it was a full-on war as the Voltron Coalition had finally located and attempted to root out the last of the entrenched Galra factions: Haggar and her horrible assortment of mangled creatures. Voltron was battling two Altean-powered (in the most literal sense, ugh) at once. Their own fighters were doing their best trying to keep the hordes of Galra fighters at bay while taking on the seemingly endless Galra battle cruisers surrounding them.

It’s like they knew to target Atlas right off the bat, and had concentrated all their firepower on it while another robeast had snuck up on them and drained them of their energy. Voltron was too busy battling back its own robeasts, and Shiro couldn’t even coax the ship into its mech form.

It was a difficult decision, but Shiro knew he had to do it. “Alert the crew to evacuate ship immediately. Coran, grab Atlas’s crystal. Commander Iverson, keep her trajectory on course. Maybe she’ll be able to take out one final ship on her way out.” The most critical one at that.

“But sir, where are you going?” Commander Iverson asked as he watched Shiro climb into his flight suit.

“To deal with the robeast,” Shiro said grimly.

“But that’s suicide!”

“Remind me to tell you about my Champion days if we get through this, Commander,” Shiro said before walking off the bridge.

So maybe engaging with a robeast, one who gave even Voltron a run for its money, wasn’t the smartest thing Shiro had ever done, and most likely he wouldn’t end up surviving it to get the lecture later, but he had to give the others the time to at least escape and couldn’t afford the creature swatting down escape pods like flies.

And he had learned a thing or two from his time in the arena: always play a little dirty.

The robeast was faster and more agile than Voltron, but not so against a tiny speck of a human being. Even its swiftest scythe attacks couldn’t keep Shiro from getting in close and climbing up one of his spindly white metal legs. Nor could it shake him off or bat at him when Shiro finally made his way to its back.

Shiro’s powered up his prosthetic, then engaged its most recently upgraded modified function: energy absorption. “Let’s see how you like it,” he said before punched his hand through the robeast’s center mass.

Agony. His whole body was burning from the inside out. Blood curdling screaming filled his ears. Belatedly, he realized it was coming from him. Too much quintessence. Too much. Even if Atlas’s own energy felt as familiar to him as his own face and he knew her like he knew how to breathe. He couldn’t hold it and he had no way to release it, but he couldn’t let the robeast go. Tiger by the tail, he thought hysterically. Or a lion.

But maybe he could redirect it in more beneficial ways.

It was sort of like manipulating a puppet, Shiro thought. A very large, very deadly robot puppet. In his mind, through whatever the hell now powered his arm, Shiro could envision the robeast’s inner workings like he had built it himself, just like how he had known what Atlas could turn into.

Throwing the entirety of his weight to one side, he managed to jerk the robeast in the direction he needed it to go, and with another concentrated forceful push of his mind, reversed the flow of quintessence from going _out_ to going back _in_ , too much and too fast.

The robeast had no choice but to release its glut of energy, shooting it outwards in a blind beam of deadly force...right at its own brethren.

It was enough energy for Voltron to finally get the upper hand and destroy one of the robeasts there and then. With the odds now a little more even, Voltron had no problem going on the offensive against the other weakened robeast, soon taking it out as well.

 _Good_ , Shiro thought faintly as his vision began to darken at the edges and colors all started to blur together. At some point, the robeast he drained had detached itself from Atlas and was lifelessly drifting through space. Atlas was like a ghost ship as it slowly but inevitably crashed into Haggar’s battle cruiser, lighting up space like a detonated Xanthorium crystal chain reaction. It was pretty. A nice final view to go out on. _You served us well, old girl. Thank you._ He and Atlas always did have a lot in common.

As the last of his consciousness was fading, Shiro thought he was maybe hallucinating, because he was pretty sure that was Kosmo who just teleported before him and wrapped his jaws around Shiro’s shoulder before—

“What is wrong with you? Don’t you have an ounce of self-preservation?” Keith was yelling in his face despite the fact he was hugging Shiro so hard that he was having a little difficulty breathing.

Oh, he was on the Black Lion. Hello, old friend. He felt a familiar feline brush against the back of his mind, like a big cat rubbing up affectionately against his legs.

“Shiro!” Keith was shaking him, trying to get his attention. “Shiro, are you even listening to me?”

Shiro blinked and focused on him. Keith was so beautiful when he was furious. His ridiculous hair got in his face. His eyes flashed like a Marmoran blade. Or pure quintessence.

Alright, so Shiro might have been a little delirious. Sue him. Instead of answering, he practically smashed his helmet against Keith’s when he tried to kiss him. Oh. Whoops. Guess the life affirming smooches would have to wait. Perhaps when he didn’t feel so much like a well done kabob. “Keith. I’m okay. You’re cute when you’re mad.”

“You’re such a self-sacrificial idiot all of the time and I hate you so much,” Keith sighed, sinking against him in relief.

“You would have done exactly the same,” Shiro told him fondly before staring down at his now burnt to a crisp prosthetic arm. Probably didn’t smell that good either. “On the bright side, I didn’t mind this little game of fetch.” He looked over to Kosmo. “Thanks, boy. Couldn’t have Keith saving me all the time. The sexual favors were hard to keep up with as it was.”

“Hey!” Keith smacked him. “I was the one who taught him how to fetch you in the first place, so technically, you still owe me.”

“Uh...guys?” Pidge’s voice comes in over the comms. “As cringeworthy as all this was to listen to and record for blackmail later, can we go home now?”

Shiro wrapped his left arm around Keith and let himself smile. It was over. It was all well and truly over.

“Yeah, team. Let’s go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> I am on [twitter.](https://twitter.com/futuredescent) Hi.


End file.
